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Seems that sometime earlier this year (April or May, does it matter?) there was a cycle race held in these parts. Maybe it was a follow up to last year’s Tour de France fandango. Well, whatever, it totally passed by me without leaving a trace, somehow the sight of a group of sweaty lycra-clad steroid enhanced bicycle riders rushing past in the blink of an eye lacks a certain degree of appeal or anything really. But à chacun son goût, as they often say in these parts, and others (more discerning, I’ve no doubt) were inspired to mark this event. Bicycles were painted yellow and blue and hung in various places. Quite where the inspiration for this odd behaviour came from I know not but I suspect a certain Gallic influence.

I’m feeling even lazier than normal so the next few days may be filled with trees going orangey-yellow like it has never happened before. This scene is near Driffield keld last seen in verdant splendour here.

I had a few minutes to sit and ponder on the 169 year old Driffield station and what’s left of its glory. Above is the old stationmaster’s house and the brick stand for a water tank, those white vans are parked in the old coal yards, while behind me the former goods yard is now modern houses. Just up the track to the right there were cattle loading facilities to take beasts to west Yorkshire from the cattle market in town. Below is the passenger station which once had a fine roof like Beverley station but now just awnings keep out the rain. Nowadays just four small trains an hour pass through whereas in the 1940’s there were up to 125 train movement in one morning!Well good riddance to all that I say. Coal is a foul stinking fuel, steam engines are inefficient mucky things and the great British railway system was a complete and utter unco-ordinated shambles with hundreds of uneconomic lines running hither and yon. There’s a progress of sorts in all this, canals put out the wagoners, train put out the bargemen and diesel lorries put out the trains. No doubt the lorries and vans will be put out by something as yet unknown (though I don’t see drones taking off, if you pardon the pun).In the UK, unlike just about every other country, the state played no part at all in planning or building the rail infrastructure. The early 19th century saw a mad rail glut as it were, completely bonkers and bound to fail which it duly did along with much criminality and fraud. After the last war rail was nationalised and rationalised and was working pretty well until monetarist ideology sold it off. Nowadays our rail system is officially much better organised with a mere 28 companies receiving between them a meagre £4 billion in state subsidies though it is said that this may rise (or skyrocket as one opposition MP put it). But surely it is only right and proper for the latter-day successors of George Hudson that the costs inherent in owning a licence to print money from a natural monopoly should be placed firmly on the broad shoulders of the long suffering taxpayer.I’d better go now, I’m beginning to ramble incoherently …

If you really want to know just about everything there is to know about Driffield station then follow this link.

You’ll have heard of the City of Culture thingy that approaches in 2017, well every thingy like this needs a thingy, a what’s it, erm a logo; that’s it. And here, designed by committee, is the very thing that will adorn all events for that year and thereafter, per omnia saeculorum. I’m told it’s not a drowning menorah … but a series of aitches (aitch, as in Hhhhull, geddit? the irony being that the aitch is almost always dropped in common parlance, it’s ‘Ull, doncha know!) disappearing into the horizon; like I say, designed by a committee to please a committee.

To go with this there’s a collection of soggy slogans whose utter banality defies belief, here’s a taster: “Someone bothering you? Tell them to go to Hull” (Ba dum tsh!) or “I went there for the Hull of it” (that’ll have them queuing for miles on the M63!). And they pay real people real money to come up with such an original play on words. I know you think I’m making this stuff up, don’t you? … well click here or here and be underwhelmed.